Keeping the Silent Movie Alive Is a Worthy Mission

It is hoped that the tremendous outpouring of sympathy and outrage at the senseless death of Laurence Austin will indeed bring about some means of keeping the Silent Movie Showcase alive (“Silent Movie Showcase Should Be Living Memorial,” by Jim Gates, Counterpunch, Jan. 27). This was one of the great undiscovered treasures in Los Angeles--an evening at the theater with films that simply were unavailable anywhere else, with live music that really brought the images on the screen to life.

In the “bottom line” mentality of the ‘90s, this sort of thing just doesn’t exist anywhere else. It couldn’t be “profitable” to charge one admission price for an evening’s worth of entertainment. This was truly a labor of love, and the thought that the act of some brain-dead scum with a handgun could take this away from us is beyond comprehension. By all means, let the theater live as a memorial to Austin. Both his memory and the city deserve nothing less.

BOB DUNCAN

Diamond Bar

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Jim Gates’ excellent piece failed to mention someone at least as important in the theater’s history as the tragically murdered Laurence Austin. The man who founded the Silent Movie Theater and operated it with his wife for about 40 years was John Hampton. I met Hampton several times in the 1970s, while attending films at the theater. He was a friendly, down-to-earth guy who was absolutely dedicated to preserving silent movies. From our conversations, I learned a little about his remarkable story.

He came to L.A. from Oklahoma in 1940 for two reasons: to get away from the Dust Bowl, which aggravated his asthma, and to open a silent movie theater. He and his wife, Dorothy, ran the little film house alone. They had a small apartment upstairs above the box office. If I remember right, Hampton used to play records to accompany the movies he screened.

He said he started collecting silent films in the 1930s, when they were cheap and unwanted in the wake of the craze over talkies. Even then, he was afraid they would be forgotten, and lost.

By the mid-’70s, when I first went to the theater, it was in pretty sorry disrepair. Seems Hampton had been spending every spare dollar and moment on frantically preserving his precious nitrate films before they decomposed. He contracted several skin ailments, he said, from working with the chemicals used in the preservation process. I don’t think he took proper safety precautions. Around 1978, the theater went on “hiatus,” and just stayed closed, year after year. Hampton was working around the clock to save his films, and had developed cancer, he suspected, from working too closely with the preservation chemicals. I used to drop by the theater to see when it would reopen, and he was always vague about it, saying things like, “maybe later this year.” He died a few years later.

Lawrence Austin should be credited with rescuing the theater. Without Austin’s efforts, the place would certainly have died with Hampton.

JAMES E. MAXWELL

Thousand Oaks